


Post Script

by aroceu



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Consensual Infidelity, Depression, Eating Disorders, Existential Crisis, Gen, Zayn-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-25 13:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/953524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aroceu/pseuds/aroceu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>not fighting, not waking</p>
            </blockquote>





	Post Script

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction!! Obviously
> 
> um this was just my way of getting some very not-happy thoughts out. All of the things I tagged are very vague/not very 'whoa terrible in your face', meaning the existential crisis and the depression and the e.d. are just kinda... yeah. 
> 
> It's really sad I guess? also short. it's been a while since I've written fan-angst oh man

It's midnight. Zayn has his hand closed over his phone. Perrie had finished texting back hours ago. Zayn's here, staring at his ceiling.

Today is one of their days off. So is tomorrow, and the rest of the week. They've been doing shows and interviews and recordings for nearly half a year. The most they can spare is a week of doing absolutely nothing.

Zayn feels like he should be more grateful. He's got thousands of pounds. Hell, he's even had enough to buy his mum a house, and all of his little sisters' entire Christmas wish lists. He's been all over the world and so many people know his name.

He sighs, turns over, and tries to fall to sleep.

*

He wakes up, watches some football, eats. Misses phone calls and text messages. Draws and plays some video games and eats some more. Has a few of his friends over, talks to them.

Eventually, he sleeps again.

When tour starts back up, Louis claps him on the back and Niall tackle hugs him to the ground.

"Good t'see ya, mate," says Liam, once Niall's let go. He hugs Zayn, too.

"Yeah, it's not like I'm stuck with you for the rest of the year." Zayn rolls his eyes.

"Well that's what we're here for," says Harry. "And the year after that, and the year after that."

"We'll be settin' a boy band record!" says Niall.

"C'mon," says Louis, spreading his arms wide open. "Bring it in, lads."

*

He sings and not-dances and records and answers questions. Everyone says, _congratulations on the engagement! Congratulations on the movie! Congratulations on the success!_

Perrie helps, but only a little.

He wakes up again. Lou does his hair, and he can hear Sandy and Dan practicing in the room next door. Harry and Liam are still asleep, and Niall and Louis are in the hotel room right next to them. Sometimes hotels don't have big enough rooms for five boys. But Zayn's seen a lot.

The next day, he records. Niall's next to him, in only sandals and a pair of blue boxers.

"Y'alright, Zayn?" he says, and Zayn nods.

"Ready for another day of this," he says.

*

_You ought to be having fun_ , he tells himself when he wakes up again.

The other boys look like they always do. Zayn has no way for knowing for sure.

But Harry's always got a hand on his phone, and Liam's eyes are bright when he wakes up, and Niall goes about with his mouth half open and heart spilling out, and Louis—

Well, Louis says, "It's kind of the same, you know? Every day."

He's got a head on Zayn's stomach and Zayn is tapping out a text message to Perrie. ( _was he good, at least?_ )

"Yeah," says Zayn, without thinking.

"I'm a little," says Louis, and then looks at Zayn. "D'you think it can be easy to get bored, sometimes?"

Zayn's phone buzzes. ( _hes the same, not quite like u xx_ ) Zayn glances at it, but says to Louis, "Yeah, most definitely. 'Cause, like. We're not doing things normal lads do, but it's still—like you said, the same."

His own words hit him more than they should. His brain muscles sort of sag.

( _good to hear, I guesss x_ )

( _is there something wrong?_ )

"But," says Louis, "there's usually something that makes things different, too."

Zayn wishes, out of all the things he understands about Louis, that he understood this part.

*

He knows that if he'd won X Factor on his own—and he tries not to think of it, tries not to think of the X Factor at all—he wouldn't have lasted. He would've gone for about a year, promoting and performing and releasing one EP, and then would've disappeared back to his hometown. A one-hit wonder sort of thing, if he ever got that popular.

Sometimes he finds himself drifting away. On walks at two in the mornings and five in the afternoons, looking too hard at the incoming traffic or whatever river they happen next to, or the lighter in his hands.

Zayn tries to pull himself down, down down down. He goes on radio shows and American channels and always remembers to call his mum to tell her to turn on the tv. He washes and lathers and rinses. He repeats.

*

While they'd been filming _This Is Us_ , they'd talked about themselves in the future. Zayn's had Niall's words on in repeat in his head: " _I want us to last forever_."

He's not sure. He can easily see himself growing old, Perrie eventually leaving him and finding someone better. His parents passing away and then his sisters getting out of touch before forgetting about him. Leaving the world alone with maybe wrinkles on a hospital bed, or cigarette in hand and stained boxers and sheets.

Maybe today's the day where the concert lights explode above him, or he jumps too far and too fast, or their driver falls asleep at the wheel. Maybe he won't make it very far at all.

Niall finds him against the tour bus, smoking as they're all out on lunch break. Niall asks, "Can I?"

"No paps around?" Zayn asks. Niall shrugs. Zayn hands him a cigarette, and lights it for him.

Niall takes it and breathes. They do this, occasionally.

Niall's eyes are solid and focused and Zayn thinks he's been a little in love with each of his bandmates, once. Before they've started looking like faces and Zayn's become too—

"D'you think I'm selfish?" he asks Niall, for a moment.

Niall looks bewildered. "Nah, bro, you're," he says, and then shrugs again. "Where's this coming from?"

Zayn's mouth feels too heavy and the smoke just feels like added weight, putting on and off. "I'm just," he says. Niall makes him talk in incomplete sentences, sometimes.

"You've been in your head a lot lately," Niall says. "But that's not selfish, yeah?"

There are too many, too many things going on in Zayn's mind. He says, instead, "I just don't feel right," wanting to say that he doesn't feel at all, doesn't notice, doesn't know what's the _point_ when everything is smoke, thin and grey and ephemeral.

*

He can still _be_ normal, he supposes. Perrie tells him bad jokes, and it's not much effort to type _LOL omg :D_. He and the other boys play FIFA and mess with equipment and put food down each other's backs. Zayn is capable of telling his mum he's okay, and making faces at cameras.

And he wants to lie in bed and pray that he won't wake up. Opening his eyes won't be a chore anymore. The motions will feel less meaningless. He won't have to worry about trying to vocalize it to anyone, with words like, _be thankful for where you are! you're rich and famousl!_ bouncing back to him.

There had been a time when all the thoughtless comments on Twitter during Ramadan had been the whispering voices in his ear. Now every word he's afraid to not hear, and not say, is what passes him by—or, nothing at all.

The marks on his body remind him that he's still here.

On a ride to the airport, he slips a little and buries his face against Liam's shoulder. Liam immediately rests Zayn's hand against his own.

"Something wrong?" he asks.

Zayn answers, "No."

His fingers tighten with Liam's, though.

*

There are days when he forgets about the sadness, feels more in this world than out of it. He draws on his walls while drawing on his walls.

Then colors look more like colors and he tries to find the outline.

He thinks, sometimes, that if he eats as little as possible, if he doesn't eat at all, he'll grow thin enough to be gone. That way, he won't—he's not someone who deserves to be famous, to be him.

Fans ask him for a photo and cheer for him at concerts and he hears Niall saying, _That's not selfish, yeah?_ It is, it's really fucking selfish and Zayn doesn't care what Niall says. He splashes blue on red on black and tries so hard to paint it over with white.

*

A girl is in his bed and it's not Perrie. It rarely is; Perrie is better at this, less messy. Zayn knows that if he were a normal boy and she was a normal girl, they wouldn't need to ask for pleasures from someone else. Zayn takes what people offer.

In another world, he'd be at uni right now. Dragging himself to classes every day, worrying about money and work in the future.

This is the best he'll be, he tells himself. He turns over and stuffs his face in his pillow.

He doesn't know the difference between trying to suffocate himself, and falling asleep.

*

When they're two hours from sound check, Zayn wakes up. He doesn't want to, doesn't _want_ to be alive or awake or do anything.

He smothers himself and hiccups and his eyes stain his pillow from grey to black.

His bed curtain opens, which, _just great_. Harry's voice says, "Are you there, Zayn?"

"Does it look like it," Zayn says. He doesn't know if Harry can make it out; he burrows himself deeper.

"You're going to be late, Zayn," says Harry, but his voice is soft. He nudges Zayn's fingers with his own. "C'mon."

"Right, I'm coming," says Zayn, and peeks above his blankets a little to show Harry that he's okay.

Harry blinks, and then he's gone. A moment later and then Zayn is opening his eyes again ( _when had he fallen asleep?_ ) and Harry is discussing,

"… just, don't think today's the time for him."

"He's not been very," he hears Louis say.

There are more than two pairs of footfalls, too.

"Zayn," says Liam gently.

Niall says, "If you wanna talk to us, then you can talk to us."

And it might be the hand that rests on his head, above his blankets, but then he can't stop cr—he hiccups, trying to find wor—th-they don't need to be here, when they've—they're not—

"C'mon," says a voice, very close to his ear, and it's Louis, but not his arms going around his shoulders, or the hand wrapping around his own, or the tiny little kiss pressed to his forehead through the comforter, lingering there. "We're your brothers, mate," says Louis, "in it with you and everything."

Zayn's shaking and gripping so hard on his blankets, and he doesn't know if he's trying to bring them closer or push them off. The arms wrapping around him go to his back, and his hand is squeezed tighter.

Louis says, "We love you."

Zayn breaks. They have n- _no_ idea, they don't know, they won't—He'll lose all motivation to sing, one day, to tour and record and not-dance and eat and live.

They'll continue.

He's constantly sinking, in monochrome and margins.

But Louis and Liam and Harry and Niall hold him until he doesn't want to breathe anymore. Zayn gasps and clings and, for now, unfolds himself awake.


End file.
